Inkscape tutorial - Inkscape SVG tutorial - Inkscape trace bitmap - Inkscape trace - easy Inkscape

hello friends welcome okay today we are going to create our own svg files um my friend jenny i have her permission um to do this tutorial for her because i was like this is a perfect teaching moment for everyone um anyway my friend jenny she was chatting with me on instagram and she's like i'm trying to figure out how to make this file i need an ipad i need this that and everything else like i can't figure it out she said i didn't have the funds to do it and i'm like what do you what are you what are you trying to create and she told me that she had bought in a file from etsy and it was a pdf and it wasn't what she needed for her laser cutter and then she went and said that she paid someone else to create this file in the outline still too thin and then now she's coming to me for help and i'm like what what is going on and so she finally sent me the pdf file and she was like i just need this this is what she needs right here um and it's specifically just this outline and all the little pieces on the inside of it i have another one right here it's not glued down so if i do let it go it will pop out of place but essentially all she was wanting was is this outline piece and then all the little pieces to go in there into it for it to fit snug like that to where when she glues it all down from her laser cutter it'll end up looking like a finished product like this so she was like how in the world how in the world do you do that i said send me the file and i'll do it for you i did it and then a couple days later i messaged her and i said hey look do you mind if i use that pdf file that you purchased in the file that i created for you to show others how easy it is to make this right here this file right here because she was wanting to purchase all of this new equipment and everything else and she didn't need to she absolutely did not need to do any of that um i personally use a free file program not a file a free program called inkscape i'll link it down in the descriptions of course um it's free you can do it on windows and mac i have mac um i solely work on all macs anyways it is free yes there it's not as like user friendly as adobe or you know other programs that aren't free but it's free so that's the amazing part of it is that you don't have to pay gang's amount of money to make svg files for yourself and this particular file she wanted for her laser cutter for her glowforge but you can make it for the cricuts or for silhouette anything lost like that anytime you need an svg file you can usingscape to make that for you um and it's free so i know that there will be a little bit of frustrations and hiccups i've been using this program for gosh like six years now i don't know all what all buttons you do or anything else like that i google it if there's something that i would like to figure out how to do i just kind of google it there's somebody out there like me creating a tutorial to help you teach you how to use this program but at the end of the day it is free and that to me like to save money in the very end i would rather learn how to use a free program than spend a whole bunch of money on another program that you have to pay for okay so let's get started i am going to flop myself up to the top bring this down put it in the corner okay this is inkscape right here it kind of looks like um i'm trying to think of what the other program that other people use that looks like this and i had it in my brain and now i forgot um but this is what inkscape look like it looks like it's free okay so jenny had sent me over the pdf download that she had purchased off etsy it was a stained glass pattern and it came like this this is what it's supposed to look like after it's done or what they suggest color wise and everything else like that and then you have this one and then this one that has the numbers we don't need the numbers that's like unnecessary for us especially when we're creating something like this and i always like to like create finished products while i'm doing these tutorials so i can kind of show you exactly what we're doing um so that's why i have that's why i have these to show you okay so the you don't need the colors and you do need this so a black and white you could use the colors if you wanted to but since jenny sent me this um pdf file and i had the black and white that's perfect if you have a black and white file that's exactly what you want to do so for me what i am going to do is i am going to take a screenshot of this so for me in my mac its command shift and three just going to take a screenshot of this the sun is blaring and i just want to clip everything else out besides the gnome itself and the sun is blaring on my screen so it's kind of hard for me to see what exactly i'm doing here here we go okay so you can see i'm just kind of clipping out everything but it's okay if you have a little bit of the letters left over you're going to delete that here in a second and just save that to your desktop or wherever i always when i'm working on svg files especially when i'm clipping things i always go to my i always put it to my desktop okay we're going to make this a little bit smaller and here is the very top this is the one that you just screenshot and we're just going to drag that in and then you can see a plus mark just drag that in this little file box pops up i don't you know we've been i've been using this for so long never change anything on here i just press okay so this is your screenshot this is what got brought into inkscape um if you were to file and save this it won't save correctly at all you're just saving your screenshot which you already have so it's not necessary um what you want to do is you want to trace the you want to trace this you want to get the outline of it um so here let me put that in the middle okay so you can right click make sure it's clicked on to the thing if it's like this and you right click nothing will pop up if you want you want to make sure you click on your image that you just imported and right click on there sorry i'm like trying to figure out the best lighting there we go okay so we want to right click and then you want to press this little area right here it says trace bitmap another box will open up real quick just press update so you can see that now ever all the lines that you need i can drag this over so then you can actually see you know what you're what you're dealing with here so all of the lines that you are going to need are there everything you see here is there you do have the lettering it's fine we'll delete that here in a second okay so the brightness threshold if you're dealing with lighter colors like if we show if we if we wanted to use this one right here not all of your colors will show up because some are lighter so then you'll want to just adjust the brightness threshold which you can tell as i do that the lines start to get a little bit distorted in some areas it's fine um you can i mean it i guess it's just for user preference if we're making we're gonna make it thicker here in a second so we don't need to do that um but again if you don't see all the lines that you need for your svg file or the one thing that you're tracing then all you do is you adjust your brightness um and we the the automated number is 0.45 if you go below 0.45 you can see and keep pressing update that the lines get a little bit thinner and i don't really want the thin line so i'm going to go back to 0.45 just because that's where it was before and then press update always make sure and update so if you're adjusting numbers and you're like pressing things and you're not seeing any changes make sure and press update and as long as you don't come over here and do anything over here you're fine you're golden you can continue updating you can continue changing but when you got your finished look which is exactly what we have right here press ok it'll look like nothing's happened but as long as you press ok you're fine go up to the right and just close this little box okay now again it says it looks like we didn't do anything but if you click on the top area and you drag it over oh it's cusping so cusping is like it's locking into place like that if you don't want to do that i always turn this off just go to the very right at the top and this enabling snap enable snapping just turn that off and so then it will move freely and it won't want to cusp on top of each other okay so if we move this and we go over this is the bottom one and how you can tell it's the bottom one this line right here this like box that's your work space um it's set to like eight and a half by eleven that's their default you can change that if you wanted to it's not necessary for today but if you drag this over around your project box and you don't see the inside of it then that is your original original image it would be easier to tell because if it was in color because you would obviously tell that this was in color and you wanted it in black and white if you drag this over drug dragged something and you can see like let me put this over to the very left and you can see the project box is behind that this is this is the trace this is what you want to keep this you don't want to keep we don't need it after we got our trace we can delete it okay so we'll put that one back in the project box um next on the list is getting rid of this um this lettering we don't need it it's unnecessary we're only looking for this these pieces this piece and all these little pieces that's all we're looking for so what you want to do is go over here to this is the node selection click that and all the nodes will all light up on the box so if you have multiple pictures of images on your on your project screen whatever it is that you're that you're working on those nodes will pop up we only have one image right now so of course that's going to be the only one that doesn't pop up if in fact if by chance you don't have it clicked right now and there's nothing selected and you go over to the nodes and nothing happens just come over here and just select the image that you're wanting to work on and it'll pop up for you now what you want to do is just drag over your cursor and highlight all the nodes you do not want we don't want those and just delete them just press delete and they are gone so this is exactly what we want we want the entire gnome in its entirety go back up to the arrow key there are a couple different ways of doing this um the easiest way to do this and i will show you the easiest way because if you do it the hard way it'll be frustrating so let me show you the easiest way easiest way to do this is you want to duplicate this item at the very top there is a spot where you can duplicate i do keystrokes which on the mac it's command d is duplicate it will look like nothing just happened but if you drag over on the top now you have two of the same thing if you're working in design space with a cricut thing when you duplicate it moves it over which sometimes gets a little frustrating this one it doesn't you when you duplicate it it's going right to the very top so you do have to drag over your duplicate copy which is this right here so we'll just put this over here to the right because we don't need that for right now okay this right here is our guy wait jenny wanted okay so hold on let's take a step for a second here jenny wanted a thicker um a thicker border on hers like this she wanted it thicker if she were to cut this right now just the way it sits it would be really thin which is exactly what she got when she had paid someone to make this svg file she got it just like this where it was like a thinner file if you want it thin like that that by all means you can stop right here and then you can stop this next step and then move on to what i'm about ready to show you or what i wanted to show you but she needed it thicker and the only reason why for that is when you cut it with acrylic acrylic is plastic and it bends a lot easier so when it's too thin it really does bend and it doesn't cut well and it kind of burns and melts so she wanted it thicker so how you did that let me delete let me delete the duplicate because it's not going to be duplicate after we're done doing this okay she wants it thicker so there's two ways of doing this you can do it with if you came up to path and offset or outside um and it makes things thicker or larger or a um or in or what's it called in design space an offset and that's essentially what you're doing you're creating something that's thicker for the mac it's command shift and then the parentheses out and see how just made it thicker so let's go command z that's that's going back see how it's thin and it's thick oops let me highlight that again okay that's thick that's thin so that's what you're doing you're creating a thicker line so for jenny i did i did it a couple times so command shift and then the parenthesis out um and that seems about what i did too i did two to make it a little bit thicker for her okay now we have that if you did not want a thicker line then you didn't have to do that step now you can continue on to what we're what i'm about ready to show you okay so now we want to duplicate that which is command d on a mac um or if you go up at the very top where it says it is file and then you could do pay you can do duplicate right here command or and see it tells you right here command d okay come over drag this over to the right eventually we'll get there okay so now that you have this you're going to have two essentially what you have is two of these and they're not individual cup files at all they're just it's if you were to cut this it were to cut like that's why i don't have it glued down to show you if you stopped right now you would have to cut this thing multiple times all the time to get all of these pieces in different colors so we want each individual piece to be its own color i should have never lifted this up okay this is essentially what you're going to have it's just one svg file and all of it is going to be one one color so what she wants is is each individual piece being its own color so she can move it around or change the colors very easily so they want all individual separate pieces so what you want to do now is you have one duplicate we'll drag that over to the side select the one that you have on your work table go up to path and press break apart or it's control shift k but just press path and break apart all of these things just popped up and all of your things just disappeared all the inside little pieces just disappeared that is fine now we have if you if you deselect everything select the top we have drag that one over okay now we have this part minus the stick this is this is what you just drop drag from the top the it always does that the backer piece whatever is the most of it always saves so this is the backer piece this is what just saved at the very top what you just dragged drug over now you have all these little pieces and if you select them they're all individual pieces so now this is what you have right here all these little pieces right here that you can change to do this you can do a red white we have royal blue so you can change all these now individually before if you were to do that before with this it would not let you do that it would only change the outline which is exactly what you have so you don't want that so now i'll go back and we'll do light blue and both these little guys are gray so i'm going to shift and select both and we'll change that to gray there you go so now you have all these little pieces oh his nose is brown so let's change it over to brown okay now this right here is this this is what you're left with and this is what you want so now if you were to take this drag it over to the top they will fit it's hard to do it on the computer to make sure that it lines up all the way okay there it is so you have now have this you have all these little pieces and you have just the outline minus the stick now if you want to create the stick jenny did not need the stick um she she's doing this entire project for something very different than what i've created for you but at least you figured out how to make your own svg file that's right um if you want to do the stick i had created this to be like a garden planter thing or like a plant stake so we need a little stick and the stick is only on the backer plate that's the stick that i created so in order to do that i want to drag the very i want to drag this outline away so it remains three separate pieces okay so we want to create this stick if you're wanting to create this garden pick what you need to do is you need to highlight the thing that you're working on get the box the box little guy you just kind of want to drag it around you want it to be touching you want it to touch this part right here because you're getting ready to weld them together push them together same kind of concept like in in design space in cricut's design space where you're welding things together you want to conjoin them you want to put them together so make sure that whatever it is that you're like this rectangle you are touching some shape or form to the place that you're wanting to put it together i don't remember the size i created it's not really necessary for exact measurements for the steak now when you look at your rectangle there's no like sharp point which i do have a sharp point so now all you want to do is go over into the create stars and polygons um button click that up here at the very top it says three corners rounded i don't want any round i want it to be sharp so i want zero rounding and a polygon or a triangle has three corners which that's what i want to create and just kind of draw a small little uh triangle that's it then go back up you always want to go back up to your select tool so you can select things otherwise that if you if you still were selected onto the polygon thing you'd be drawing another rectangle okay let's zoom in on this zooming in on inkscape for me on my trackpad is like this um i think that there's another way of doing that on the mac i'm not entirely sure i just oh here we go view and then zoom and you can zoom in zoom out or the plus or minus button is what it says but i always just track pad and do this if i want to zoom out then you go backwards but zooming in you want to squeeze and zoom in so that's what we're going to do i'm going to zoom in on this thing and it's kind of like cockeyed it's not normal so if you have your triangle selected and you click on it the arrows that that turning arrows that's exactly what you want and then just turn it to where it is facing down which we just went way too far facing down there is okay a little bit too i know we're like there we go okay unclick that click it back and just kind of drag it back over and remember we're welding it together so it needs to touch so your triangle needs to touch your rectangle and your rectangle needs to touch the very tip of your gnome shadow so with the triangle selected then press shift and select your rectangle and select the gnome so you're going to have three sections selected wanna make sure that it's all centered so go up to the very top right here where this align and distribute box click that and then this will pop up on the right make sure and center on the vertical axis there it is okay so now it's completely centered so for welding you do path and union it is called union in inkscape so press that in it all that's it so now you have this entire thing right here if you zoom in at the very tip of this right here you can tell it's not let me see if i can show you see how it's like nice and smooth for me on either side and in your design it's not that way there's kind of like an angle we can we can use the nodes again so the nodes button so click that nodes button it's already selected on our thing that we want to edit and see how there's like extra nodes there i don't want those nodes right so then you would just select the ones you don't want it's going to distort the lines don't freak out select the nodes you don't want and you see how the lines are now like all wiggly that's fine it's no big deal if you with the nodes button you want to just move these lines until they end up making the the design or the angle that you want i like that and then make sure and go back up to the arrow button and then zoom out whoa whoa we zoomed out a lot okay and then zoom out so now you have a complete finished file using a pdf that you purchased off etsy that's it you if you wanted to you could create this entire thing now if you are using this for your cricut design space you don't have to go any further you can save this save this entire file and then it will open up into design space perfectly if you are creating this for a laser cutter specifically the glowforge there are a few more extra steps you're going to need to take in order for this to be a perfect working laser file get in the habit of doing this you could technically um save this the way it sits open it up into glowforge and it would work it just creates a lot of confusion within the actual program because everything is going to think that it's something else so and also if you ever decide to go outside of glowforge and move over into a different laser company like i have an epilogue um you're going to need to save the files exactly these next steps which is very important so all of them are going to be cut files are all you want to cut all of this out there's no engraving there's no scoring there's nothing else so what you want to do is command a or select all that's what we want to do go down at the very left right here where it says fill you want to remove the fill and then where it says stroke and it says unset sometimes it says black most the time it'll say on set right click that and press black and how i did the removing the fill is right clicking as well right click remove fill then go down to the little box with stroke and press right click and black now if you were to stop right here some of these lines look a little bit different select a again and go over here to the number that's right next to the stroke right click that you always always always want it at point one and now you can see that the lines got thinner that's exactly what you want and then just you can save this the way that you want to but now each individual thing you just told your laser cutter you're cutting all of this this is what you're doing you're cutting all of this um and in order for you to click it now because there is no fill you're gonna have to make sure and like when you are clicking you click on a line okay so let's save this so go to file save as you don't want an escape inc scape svg you want it to be a plain svg and we're just going to call this oops go up here we're going to call it gnome svg that's what we're going to call it we're going to press save i'm going to go up into a new window go into glowforge's website it will load eventually okay go up into create right here to the very top left upload from file find the file that we just created i saved it to my desktop so it wasn't hard at all press return and it'll start loading into glowforge's app soon okay so now you have your three file your three images you have your outline you have all three or all of your individual cut files and then if you were to like select medium clear acrylic everything is set to cut which is exactly what you wanted and it's going to be the current the cleanest crispest cut ever and then you just go to cut that's it this is super simple and super easy um if you have any other questions when it comes to inkscape let me blow myself up real quick if you have any other questions on the inkscape i am for you i will help you because it's not hard to figure out it does take a little bit of a learning curve but it's definitely worth it because it is free um hopefully you're able to create this file as well i would i would totally be excited to see what creations you create with using the steps that i just uh showed you but all right on to the next tutorial have a good day bye

Channel: ashlee falco

Views: 12,707

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Id: jE2hERwFn6o

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 23 2022